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You've got the next big digital idea that will turn an industry upside down, make the world a better place and transform everyone around you into billionaires - you just need $300,000 to $3 million to get the ball rolling.

Which means you need to meet David Blumberg.

Or someone like him. Not many Silicon Valley venture capitalists, however, are willing to venture to Vancouver lugging along $150 million to invest in promising startups. But that's exactly what Blumberg, of San Francisco's Blumberg Capital, is doing April 30.

It's not his first trip here - Blumberg was in on the first round of seed financing for current tech darling HootSuite, and played a similar role with Creo before it was sold for a pile of cash to Kodak back in 2005.

Hosted by another of his pet Vancouver projects - the "Internet identity bureau" Trulioo - Blumberg's visit is aimed at spreading some Silicon Valley cash and clout around the Lower Mainland. He wants anyone who thinks they're onto a good thing in enterprise software, digital and social media or mobile and consumer Internet to send their "deck," or presentation, to pitchnight@blumbergcapital.com by early April at the latest.

He'll sort through them and pick about a half dozen for a face-to-face, 20-minute session in Trulioo's downtown Vancouver offices on April 30. Blumberg's team evaluates 5,000 business plans a year worldwide and invests in "maybe a dozen."

He's been a tech early bird for almost 25 years now, and says aspiring entrepreneurs should adhere to the following "six Ts" when dealing investors:

Theme "Tell me what problem you're going to solve," Blumberg said in a telephone interview. "It's got to be very crisp - no more than a paragraph."

Team "Who's going to lead us into the promised land?" Blumberg asked. "Who has the domain experience, ethics, charisma?"

Terrain "The lay of the land. Who are the competitors? The dynamic buyers and sellers? Government regulation, or are things pretty open? Is there a lot of noise in the marketplace?"

Technology "What property is unique to you?" he said. "It's usually algorithms, or patents or such." Blumberg is a big fan of disruptive ideas that make the digital world and service economy easier to use, and points to the ride-sharing service Uber as an example (it has run into a series of regulatory roadblocks in Vancouver and elsewhere).

Timing "Why is now the time? How will you go to market?"

Terms "How much do you want for the first stage? What milestones will you use? How will you spend it?" Blumberg makes clear that your team is what he's most interested in.

"Very few solo entrepreneurs survive," he said.

"If you are solo, who are you looking for as partners?" He said "serial entrepreneurs" have nothing to fear from failure, "as long as you've learned from it."

The biggest area of weakness Blumberg has found over the years is in the Terrain category.

"Entrepreneurs are not good surveyors," he said.

"They can be tone deaf on competition and timing."

There is one thing that will kill the best-laid plan, however.

"Don't try to hide things," Blumberg warned. "We'll find out. If the team is not full, don't sub in an intern ... if you've had ethical challenges; well, that would probably kill it anyway."

Trulioo co-founders Stephen Ufford and Tanis Jorge have particular appreciation for Blumberg's faith in Vancouver's scene; they've just secured $6 million in Series A financing with his help. They'll use it to expand their Internet identity operations - which just hit 100 million verifications - to Britain.

Ufford and Jorge are startup vets, and Ufford remembers moving down to Silicon Valley in the 2000s to find his pot of gold.

"A totally different culture," Ufford recalled.

"It took me a year to learn that I was being way too Canadian. (Investors) test you on everything. I had to learn to not say, 'So sorry' to everything and turn it back on them ... prove them wrong."

Ufford contrasted the Silicon Valley and Vancouver approach: "Here we build businesses; in the Valley, they build dreams that turn into businesses."

Jorge says Blumberg helps bring the Valley north, but many in the Vancouver tech scene can become "very nervous" at the thought of an intense meeting.

that additional advice on the selected pitches is available at the B.C. Technology Industry Association's centre4growth.

As far as Blumberg's concerned, nothing should get in the way of a good idea - "Let's see all those smart UBC data scientists come out and show us their stuff."

Submissions should be directed to pitchnight@blumbergcapital.com, and more information can be found at trulioo. com/blog/2014/02/18/trulioo-hosts-blumbergspitch-nights

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